


Which Witch?

by SoDoRoses (FairyChess)



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Blatant Flirting, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Goth Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, M/M, Mutual Pining, Witch Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29757096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyChess/pseuds/SoDoRoses
Summary: Virgil gets a new house and a number of visitors.Too bad none of them are there for him.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders
Comments: 24
Kudos: 229





	Which Witch?

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this ask](https://tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors.tumblr.com/post/643495827608911872/tw-caps-locks-for-emphasis-i-think-youd-take)
> 
> Thank you to [@airiervessel](airiervessel.tumblr.com) for beta-reading!

Virgil wasn't exactly the kind of person who got outwardly excited, but even he couldn't resist a slight spring in his step as he hauled the last box out of the back of his car and into his new house.

It was small, and a little leaky and rickety and spooky-looking, but Virgil had never been one to balk at something a little scary – and the bones were good, and the yard was excellent and had a perfect spot for a garden, and there was a tiny little pear orchard on the back of the property that Virgil couldn't wait to start making into jam and juice and maybe even wine, if the pears came out sweet enough.

And, most importantly, it was  _his_ . Really, truly his and no one else's, Virgil’s little corner of the world, and he was looking forward to making it his in more than just name.

Virgil set the final box – dishes and silverware – on the counter in the kitchen before putting his hands on his hips and blowing some hair out of his face with a puff of breath.

Now that he had all the boxes inside, it was a matter of _un_ -boxing them, which Virgil wasn't looking forward to. And he really wanted to get it done before the moving truck came with all his furniture tomorrow, along with Logan and Remy to help Virgil haul it all in, which meant there was no putting it off.

Groaning, Virgil went about starting the unpacking. It took him several minutes of dithering to decide which drawers and cupboards were going to get which dishes and silverware, and Virgil was sure he'd rearrange it half a dozen times over the course of the rest of the day until his anxiety settled, but such was his lot in life.

Just as he dropped the last knife in the cutlery drawer, there was a bouncy, rhythmic knock at the door, and Virgil startled. 

Logan and Remy hadn't said anything about coming until tomorrow, and none of his other friends had said anything about coming at all yet. Wary, Virgil cautiously peeked around the kitchen doorway, only to immediately get cheerfully waved at by a blurry, partially obscured figure through the front door’s window.

Well. No getting out of socializing now, he supposed.

Virgil crossed the currently empty living room, steeling himself before opening the door.

And promptly almost swallowed his tongue.

Pretty Stranger grinned, his tightly curled hair perfectly coiffed, his dark teakwood skin absolutely flawless, and his megawatt smile so dazzling Virgil braced his hand on the doorway to keep from toppling over out of sheer gay flusteredness.

"Hello, dear new neighbor," said the pretty stranger, beaming. "Aren't you just a spooky little vampire bat."

Virgil pulled nervously at the hem of his spider-web printed skirt, trying to remember how English worked around his brain pulling Defcon One Hot Guy Alarms.

"Uh, thanks," he said, smiling, "So- neighbors?"

"Of course!" replied his apparent new neighbor. "I live just down the lane, the yellow house with the flower boxes in the front windows. I'm here to welcome you to the neighborhood!"

Virgil thought "neighborhood" was a little overly charitable, considering that the house in question was only barely within reasonable walking distance of Virgil's new home. But... hot guy. Charming. Sweet. Virgil was only so strong.

"Well, thanks," he replied. "I'm Virgil."

"And you may call me Roman," said his neighbor, before actually _bowing_ in a way that was hokey and _stupidly_ endearing and wow, it really took Virgil all of five minutes to faceplant in _this_ crush, didn't it?

"Nice to meet you, Roman," said Virgil, trying to smile in a friendly-and-totally-not-flustered way.

"And a pleasure to meet you as well," said Roman. "Now, I come bearing housewarming gifts, though one does come with a warning label."

Virgil sputtered a laugh.

"Well now you have my attention," he said.

“And I am delighted to have it,” said Roman, sending Virgil another of those dazzling, charming smiles. “You see, I am a witch, and the first gift I brought is magic, so I understand if you would rather not take it – not everyone is comfortable with such things, or strangers doing them.”

Virgil raised one eyebrow.

“Magic,” he said dubiously.

Roman grinned.

“That it is.”

Humming, Virgil considered.

“Okay,” he said, leaning on the door frame. “Whatcha got, Prince Charming?”

Where  _that_ ballsy nickname came from Virgil had  _no_ idea, but Roman didn’t seem phased, reaching into his leather messenger bag and producing… some kind of wreath.

Roman presented it, and Virgil carefully took the woven circle of black, blue, and yellow ribbon, decorated with little gold charms and tied into an elaborate bow at the bottom.

“A blessing for a new home,” said Roman sweetly. “Hopefully for many years to come,”

Flushing, Virgil cleared his throat.

“Well, thank you,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

“And your second, much more mundane gift,” Roman continued, pulling a second, squarish object wrapped and tied with cloth out of his bag. “Is just a normal piece of pie.”

“Wow,” said Virgil, looping the wreath on his wrist so he could take the container with both hands. “Really rolling out the welcome wagon.”

“Of course!” said Roman, “I consider it my duty to make you feel as welcome to our street as possible.”

Virgil felt his blush deepening, praying Roman didn’t notice.

“That’s- sweet,” he managed.

Roman bowed again, one hand over his heart and oh he was a  _dork_ , a dork and handsome and stupidly charming and Virgil had a  _problem._

“Well, I won’t keep you from your work,” said Roman. “Unless you would like any help…?”

“No,” said Virgil immediately, knowing he wouldn’t make it through extended close proximity to Roman without making a fool of himself with this fresh of a crush. “I’ll let you know if I do though.”

“I am at your service,” said Roman, offering his hand for a shake.

Except when Virgil took it, Roman lifted that hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to Virgil’s knuckles, which was just fucking  _unfair._

“Farewell, dear Virgil.”

Virgil waved dumbly, eyes following Roman as he made his way down the path and past the gate, before closing the door, covering his face, and  _screaming._

Oh, he was so,  _so_ screwed.

* * *

Virgil settled into his new home easily. Roman did, in fact, come over and insist on helping Logan, Remy, and Virgil with the furniture the next day, and when he left Remy spent a good ten minutes roasting Virgil mercilessly for his painfully obvious crush.

Roman came over a lot – not enough to make Virgil freak out, but enough for Virgil to know he was frequently on Roman's mind, and that Roman was fond enough of him to bring him all manner of little ‘charmed’ trinkets and homemade foods, which made Virgil feel a little less hopeless in his infatuation.

Virgil wanted to return the favor, but his skills mostly lay in gardening, and other than the pear trees he wasn't going to have anything for a while. He could buy Roman something, but that seemed... so much less genuine, than what Roman was doing for him.

So Virgil set about the rushed business of trying to get his brand new garden ready for sharing. It was too late in the spring for a lot of things, but if he was quick enough Virgil could still get some beans or squash out of it by the end of summer.

"Excuse me?"

Looking up, Virgil found a teenage girl standing just outside his gate.

"...Yeah?" said Virgil, baffled.

The girl shuffled nervously.

"I... came because I need help," she said carefully.

Panic spiked in Virgil's chest.

"Are you hurt?" he said, dropping his trowel and rushing over to the gate. The teenager looked startled.

"No, no," she said, raising her hand. "I need- um, magical help. My sister told me to come see the witch."

It took a long moment for Virgil's head to reorient from panic to bewilderment.

"You think... I'm a witch?"

The girl gave him an incredulous look before gesturing to him awkwardly, and Virgil realized that in a long black broom skirt, an oversized charcoal blouse, and a gigantic black sunhat, that he'd maybe asked a bit of a dumb question.

"I'm not the witch," he said. "He lives down the street. Yellow house, flower boxes. You can't miss it."

Her face flushed.

"Oh," she said sheepishly. "Sorry."

"It's fine," said Virgil, "Good luck though?"

Nodding and then waving awkwardly, the girl turned away and began to walk toward Roman's house. Shaking his head, Virgil returned to his gardening.

But it needled at the back of his mind for the rest of the afternoon, especially after the girl walked back the other way with a skip in her step, and before he knew it Virgil found himself knocking on Roman's front door.

"Virgil!" said Roman, throwing open the door excitedly and immediately grabbing Virgil by the wrist and tugging him inside. "Dearest Charlotte’s Weeping, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"So you're like, really a witch-witch?" blurted Virgil ineloquently.

Roman looked confused as he led Virgil to the kitchen table and bullied him into the chair.

"What would be the difference between a witch and a witch-witch?" he said curiously.

Virgil shrugged.

"That girl," he said. "She thought I was you."

"Ah," said Roman. "Yes, young love. She has her eye on 'the prettiest girl in town' in her own words, and requested a spell to make herself more beautiful."

“And you gave it to her?”

“Of course not,” said Roman. “Don’t want to encourage that kind of thinking in a little girl, that she has to earn love with beauty. I did give her something to make her a little bit more confident, however, which I think will have much better results anyway.”

“Do you do this… a lot?” said Virgil.

“Whenever I can,” said Roman, shuffling around his kitchen to apparently make Virgil tea and tossing one of his heart-stopping smiles over his shoulder. “Why? Does something ail you, Sweet Stormcloud? I have many skills.”

Coughing into his hand to hopefully obscure his blush, Virgil shook his head.

“Nah,” he said when he’d composed himself. “I’m pretty content right now.”

Roman sat across from Virgil, placing a steaming cup of tea in front of him.

“Oh?” he said, grinning.

“Yeah,” said Virgil, smiling back. “Right now is pretty great.”

* * *

Maybe, if Virgil had been the kind of person with decent intuition, he might have taken that first interaction as a warning.

Two weeks later, someone knocked at his front door. Virgil wasn't expecting anyone, and he certainly wasn't expecting to open the door and find a literal child, no more than ten, standing on his porch with his chest puffed up.

"Mr. Witch," he said confidently. "I've come to ask you for a curse because Chris Humphrey is bullyin’ me somethin' fierce and I'd like him to stop."

Virgil resisted the urge to do something ridiculous like coo in sympathy, because he was a very serious and intimidating person.

Right.

"I'm not the witch," he said. "And I don't know if Roman does curses, but he lives down the street in the yellow house, and I'm sure he'll help you some other way if he doesn't."

The kid turned bright red, and Virgil again smothered the urge to coo.

"Oh," said the boy. "Sorry Mr. Goth! I'll go see the witch now."

Virgil managed to shut the door before he burst into laughter.

* * *

And another, again when Virgil was in the garden.

“Hello, sir,” said the old man, taking off his hat. “I’m terribly sorry to trouble you, but I know you’ve got a head for spells, and my garden’s been struck with some kind of-”

“Sorry!” said Virgil, cutting him off. “But I’m not the witch. Down the street, yellow house. Can’t miss it.”

As the old man made his way towards Roman’s, Virgil wondered if this was going to be his life now.

* * *

It was, in fact, his life now.

Every other day it seemed Virgil was fielding another one of Roman's potential clients, who seemed to think that Virgil's preferred black clothes were basically a huge neon sign reading "totally the one-stop-shop for all your spells and potions," and Virgil was starting to get annoyed.

Which is how he found himself on a particularly hot day barging into Roman's house without knocking, startling him and pinning him with a glare and a pointed finger.

"This is ridiculous!" Virgil exclaimed.

Roman gave him a flabbergasted look.

"... I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate, my dear Knight in Spooky Armor."

"Everyone thinks I'm you!" said Virgil, throwing his hands up in the air. "And the latest one thought I was _lying_ when I said I wasn’t and stormed off in a huff. I've basically become your secretary at this point, and I'm losing my mind."

Wincing, Roman stood from his chair and made a placating gesture.

"And what would you suggest?" he said gently. "I'm afraid I'm not painting my house black no matter how much you protest, or wearing it - I'm not nearly as fond of the color on myself as I am of it on you.”

Heat rushed to Virgil's face as registered what constituted some... pretty blatant flirting, and maybe it was that that caused the rush of hot courage in his chest as he spoke.

"I think you owe me," he blurted.

Roman cocked his head curiously.

"... Oh?" he said.

Face burning, Virgil nodded.

A slow smile spread across Roman's face, and he steadily stepped across the room until he was close enough for Virgil to feel the heat radiating off his chest.

"And what would you ask of me, sweet Virgil?" Roman purred.

Virgil's chest and face burned brighter, and he grinned.

"I think you should let me take you out," he said daringly.

Roman's face split into a grin.

"Oh, my darling," he crooned. "I would have done that for free.”

**Author's Note:**

> you can also find me over on tumblr [@tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors](tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors.tumblr.com)


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